Monday, February 7, 2011

We stayed overnight in Canakkale and walked around the city a bit that evening. By the waterfront, you can now get a picture of the Trojan horse used in the 2004 movie Troy.

In the morning we backtracked a bit to visit the ancient city of Troy. I was glad to hear our knowledgeable guide described the site as "complicated," because I have found it to be a confusing place to visit. Two reasons:

It is such an old site and there are so many periods/layers. It's hard to get a sense of the place at any one time. This pic on the right tries to show the different layers, but you can see that it is hard to get a sense of the place.

The excavations are somewhat random, and it partly can be blamed on Schliemann and the clumsy trenches he dug in the late 19th century.

There is a small museum at the site that does have some very helpful illustrations showing the development of Troy and what it looked like at the various periods. Probably the highlight of the visit for most people (who by now have already seen a lot of ruins...) is to climb up into the Trojan horse that is there... Just 7 pics from this day HERE.

The rest of the day was spent traveling: back to Canakkale, the ferry across the Dardanelles, and on to Istanbul.

A few things: Troy does not have any biblical significance, but it seems to get confused regularly with the important port city of Alexandria Troas located about 10 miles south. (It is confused on quite a few biblical maps, e.g., the old Logos Deluxe Maps set. It is correctly located on the attractive new set of maps in Logos4. Pic on left shows locations of Assos, Troas, Troy, and Canakkale.) This Troas, along with Assos a bit further south, was an important gateway on Paul's travels (Acts 16:5-11; 2Cor 2:12; 2Tim 4:13) and was home to sleepy Eutychus (Acts 20:5-12). If I get another chance to visit Turkey again, I would be happy to skip Troy and instead visit Assos and Troas. They are not as easily accessible, so it may add an extra day, and they are still in early stages of excavations. For more info, here's a start: